


from one degree of glory to another

by ozonecologne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Cas is trying his best, Gen, I repeat: A N G S T, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mark of Cain, Profound Bond, Season/Series 10, takes place after the events of 10.03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 17:20:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5710702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozonecologne/pseuds/ozonecologne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>“You told me once, in one of those motel rooms. You told me you were afraid you might kill yourself if you ever saw what you did to Heaven."</em><br/>Cas has been looking at him since he got in the car, and his gaze remains steady even now. “I did say that.”<br/>Dean swallows with a little difficulty. “We should have addressed that better.”</p><p> </p><p>Castiel struggles with the effects of fading grace, Dean struggles with the effects of the Mark of Cain, and sometimes Castiel is the only one who can understand what Dean is going through.</p><p>Season 10, semi-coda for 10.22.</p>
            </blockquote>





	from one degree of glory to another

I.

“Cas? Hey. Hey, Cas! You ok?”

Castiel is sitting up ramrod straight, propped up on arms straining so hard the tendons pop out and cast shadows on his skin. His eyes are wide and scared, his hair is sticking up on one side and he’s sweating. It terrifies Dean just to look at him.

Cas snaps his eyes up from the blankets like he just remembered Dean was standing in his doorway, holding his breath, and swallows around his frantic panting. “Fine. I’m…”

He shudders, and before he can find a way to end that bullshit platitude Dean is tugging on his shirt and dragging him into a half hug.

“Hey, hey,” he murmurs groggily. Adrenaline is pumping through his veins with the instinct to _protect, comfort, save_ but his voice is dry and cracked with fatigue. It’s the middle of the night; Cas’s scream jolted him out of a dead sleep. “It’s alright. It’s ok, Cas.” He wraps himself tight around the angel, strokes his hair three times like it’s magic, rests his cheek against his head. “You’re fine.”

“It… It felt so _real_.”

Dean is tired. Cas has stopped shaking, at least. “Tell me about it in the morning, ok? We’ll talk. Just go back to sleep. Don’t think about it. Wasn’t real.” He repeats the same words he’s begun to live by, between hallucinations and nightmares. “I got you.”

Cas takes a shaky breath and wraps his arms tightly around whatever part of Dean he can reach.

“Go back to sleep,” Dean murmurs again.

 

Dean sleeps like a rock after that, in his own room. When he wakes up a little bit, he’s vaguely aware of the sound of someone making coffee down the hall. From the amount of cabinet banging, it has to be Cas. The fading grace might have made him a tiny bit more human – he sleeps and eats and brushes his teeth just like everybody else – but he still doesn’t understand a few basic human considerations.

Dean sits up with a grunt and rubs his eyes before slinging on his robe and heading down the hall. Say what you want about his methods, but Cas _does_ make good coffee.

“Morning,” Cas murmurs, sitting dejectedly at the table by himself. He’s got dark circles under his eyes.

Dean nods at him and goes to stand by his side. It’s all he can do not to rub his hand along the back of his neck, up through his hair. The guy looks miserable. He clenches his fist just in time.

“How long have you been up?”

Cas shrugs as he takes a sip from his still-steaming coffee mug. “Not long. A few hours at most.” He hesitates before adding, in a softer voice, “I, um. I didn’t sleep very well.” He grips the mug tightly in his hands.

Dean frowns. “Right. Yeah, you had a nightmare,” he recalls.

Cas carefully sets his mug down on the table.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Dean asks.

Cas keeps his eyes turned down and doesn’t answer, so Dean pulls out the chair to Castiel’s left. He plops down and angles himself towards him, as nonthreatening as he can possibly make himself.

“It’ll help if you talk about it, isn’t that what you’re always telling me?” Dean goads.

Cas fidgets and folds his lonely hands together, staring up at the ceiling. He sighs.

“Do you… do you remember the crypt?”

Dean freezes. “Oh.”

Cas shakes his head and his brow contorts into something so pained Dean can’t help but to reach for him. “Hey man, I told you: I forgave you for that a long time ago.” He squeezes his shoulder in what he hopes is a comforting gesture.

Cas waves a hand dismissively. “No, it’s not that, it’s – I was gone, remember? For a while.”

Dean nods. Of course he remembers. “Right, with Naomi.”

Cas clenches his jaw. “Right. With Naomi.”

Dean waits for him to go on, stares at his profile and kneads his fingers into the meat of his arm until Cas clicks his mouth open again. “She had doubts about me, I suppose. We had to practice,” he says with some difficulty. He still won’t meet Dean’s eyes. “Over. And over. And over again,” Cas murmurs, shutting his eyes. Whatever it is he’s talking about, Dean knows he’s seeing it right now, playing across his mind like a filmstrip.

Dean's frown deepens, because he doesn’t understand and he feels guilty anyway. He drops his hand. “Practice? What does that mean, practice what?”

Cas looks over at him at last. His eyes are swimming with the same fear that Dean caught a glimpse of in the dark. “Hurting you.”

The blood drains rapidly from Dean’s face. Cas continues right along, seemingly oblivious to Dean’s reaction. “She made copies of you. Hundreds of them. Most weren’t even close but some…” He shakes his head again wearily. “Some were good. I’ve watched you die a thousand times, Dean, and if I hesitated for _one second_ –”

Dean finally manages to say something: “Cas. Stop.”

Cas covers his eyes with one trembling hand. It’s a pitiful, awful human gesture, and he winces when he says, “I’m sorry. Dean, I’m _so_ sorry.”

He isn’t sure what to say, doesn’t know how to make it better. He knows what Cas is talking about, watching your loved ones die by your own hand on repeat, a torturous loop so visceral that you wake up imagining your flesh is still blood-sticky. Dean knows exactly what Cas is feeling - that’s what his own nightmares are made of, especially after the cure.

Cas drags that hand lower down his face. “Even now…. Sometimes I’ll see you in here and there will be a knife by the cutting board and.” He gestures to it vaguely, on the other side of the room. He sags a little before continuing, like sails losing the wind. “Part of me still maps it out. Calculates how much time it would take to just – I can’t stop thinking about the space between your ribs and how my blade would fit there. I know all your weak spots, how to take you down without a sound. I can’t shut it _off._ ”

That does it for him. Dean’s lip quivers, and he tucks his chin closer to his chest to hide his eyes. He can’t help the shaking, the little wheezing noise squeezing past his lips, hot hysteric breath washing over the folds in the dead guy’s robe.

Cas freezes. “Dean? Dean are you – are you _laughing?_ ”

Dean just laughs louder, little tears squeezing out the corners of his eyes. “Sorry. Sorry, I –” he has to pause to laugh again. “It’s just. I do – I do the _exact_ same thing.” He giggles into open air.

Cas looks at him like he’s lost his god damn  _mind_.

“The Mark,” he laughs as an explanation. “I’m always thinking about it. Killing. Just can’t seem to help it.”

He drapes his cursed arm around the back of Castiel’s chair. And just like that, Cas lets out the breath he’d been holding in a low, rumbling chuckle of his own. He gives it a second before he’s laughing in earnest, and that just makes Dean laugh harder.

He leans back against Dean’s arm, right by the scar. It burns and Dean couldn’t care less.

“What a fucking pair we are,” Dean sighs when they’ve calmed down.

Cas hums an assent and reaches up to pet Dean’s hair, just as Dean did for him in the night.

 

II.

Dean is sitting at the library table with his feet propped up, grumpily stirring a bowl of chili. Sam’s already had three bowls, but Dean can’t even bring himself to finish this first one. It’s probably cold, but Dean can’t tell. In fact, he can’t really taste it at all.

It’s worse some days than others. He’s not sure why. In the middle of the week stuff just starts to taste like dirt, but he chokes it down anyway for Sam’s sake. Feed his sham humanity, fake it till you make it.

He never ate anything during his stint with the black eyes. Didn’t have the need. Food was sometimes downright repulsive, sat like a rock in his gut for days until the feeling just… disappeared.

The poison of the Mark of Cain chokes him so thoroughly that nothing else can force its way down his throat. Nothing soothes the bitter aftertaste of what Dean knows is bubbling up in him again.

Cas shuffles into the room as Dean’s frowning down at his spoon, and Dean quickly straightens up, sets the bowl down, pretends everything is fine and that he is busy. “Hey,” he says, clearing his throat. “How’s Claire?”

Cas sighs and drapes his coat over the chair opposite Dean. “I don’t think I will ever understand teenage girls. I have been alive for millennia and seen many, many things, and still she never ceases to mystify me.”

Dean snorts and pushes a book towards him. “Well you can keep me company while you decompress,” he says, waving at the chair. “Siddown, man. Take a load off.”

Cas does, but doesn’t prop his feet up on the table. Just slumps a little and rubs his face.

His eyes land on the chili bowl at Dean’s elbow. “Did I miss dinner?” Cas asks worriedly.

Dean smiles down at the book he’s pretending to read. “You don’t even eat,” Dean reminds him, pushing the bowl a little further away from himself.

Cas slumps further in the chair. “I like having dinner with you, though. That night with Charlie, we should do that more often.”

Dean wholeheartedly agrees. His heart pulls a Grinch move just listening to Cas say it aloud. “Yeah, we really should.”

Cas smiles and flips a page before he starts reading too. Dean chews his lip as he watches him, and then looks at the bowl of cooling chili. _Shit, why not._ After their conversation in the kitchen, maybe Cas could empathize.

He clears his throat and leans forward a little on his elbows. “I’m not - I mean.” He stops and starts over, splaying his hands. “I don’t think I’d be eating either,” he confesses. “At dinner. I can’t. Food just doesn’t…”

Castiel looks up and a flash of concern darts across his face. “Another side effect?”

Dean shrugs and leans back. “I just don’t taste things sometimes. It’s like a mouthful of ash, dude, it _sucks_. Even PIE.”

Castiel chuckles and though his brow puckers, he doesn’t seem nearly as worried about this as Sam would be. “When I was human, I acquired a taste for peanut butter -”

“Yeah, no kidding. We had like six jars of the stuff.”

Cas smiles a little sheepishly. “Now that I’m an angel again,” he says, as if Dean hadn’t even interjected, “it doesn’t taste like anything. Just molecules.”

Dean snorts. “I used to think you were making it up, but… Is this how stuff tastes to you? All the time?” Dean asks, pointing accusingly to his bowl of chili.

Cas shakes his head. “Not like ash, more like… sand?” he tilts his head and frowns, like he’s not sure of the analogy. “Most things are bland and gritty. Some are more pleasant than others.”

Dean laughs and stands, taking the rejected bowl with him. He’s ready to give up on it now. “At least I can still drink beer. You want one?”

Castiel considers for a moment. “Alright.”

Dean nods and carries the bowl back into the kitchen, stopping at the fridge to pull two beers out for him and his friend. He knows the alcohol won’t affect him – either of them, now that he thinks about it – but that’s not really the point.

He’s just glad that there’s someone to talk to about these things. He is so fucking grateful for Castiel. It makes him feel just a little less monstrous to know that someone else feels what he feels. Maybe that will help him in the long run.

He’s coping with the Mark, he really is – sometimes to the point where he feels he’s got it under control – but the changes are still tough on him. He doesn’t like being something he never used to be. Cas… has a lot of valuable perspective on that point.

He hands Castiel his beer and sits across from him again. Cas twists off the top and takes a long drag, throat working as he swallows, before frowning down at his book again. Dean does the same, and he damn near smiles when he can’t even taste it.

 

III.

As Sam continues muttering the incantation for their summoning spell, Castiel pulls Dean to the side by his shirtsleeve.

“Give me your hand,” he says quietly, so not to distract Sam.

Dean clenches his fists. A little blood still oozes between his knuckles. “It’s fine, Cas, it’s not deep.”

“Please,” Cas says, turning Dean’s hand over in his own. His fingers uncurl automatically at the touch and Castiel drags his fingertips along the lines of his palm, withering grace already reaching out to close the wound.

But when Castiel’s fingers touch down, he is met with raw, whole skin. There’s only a faint pink line where Dean had dragged his silver blade through his hand just minutes ago. The blood smeared there is old and cooling tacky in the creases.

Dean carefully avoids Castiel’s eyes. He knows it’s too quick for an ordinary person to heal. He knows he’s getting less human by the day. Whatever the Mark did to him the first time, it’s doing again with frightening speed and power. He’s relapsing faster than they all thought. He doesn’t want to watch Castiel’s face drop in disappointment.

“Oh. Good.”

He lets go of Dean’s hand and tries to smile. “You’ll be in less pain that way. And it certainly makes my job easier,” he jokes.

Dean shoves the offending hand in his pocket.

He’s not laughing.

 

IV.

He’s sitting in the driver’s seat of the Impala, blood caked down his front. Cas slides in next to him, brushing ash from their monster pyre off his sleeves and pushing his hair out of his eyes. He smells like rotting wood and clean sweat. Dean can practically taste the iron in the air – from the vamps’ blood, from the knife at his side. He clenches the steering wheel tight.

He’s still buzzing from the fight, not that there was much of one.

“You told me once, in one of those motel rooms. You told me you were afraid you might kill yourself if you ever saw what you did to Heaven.”

Cas has been looking at him since he got in the car, and his gaze remains steady even now. “I did say that.”

Dean swallows with a little difficulty. “We should have addressed that better.”

Cas smiles and nods once. He readjusts himself in his seat so that he’s more turned towards Dean. “Would you like to address it now?”

Dean lets go of the steering wheel and it all pours out. Werther, Benny, Purgatory, that dead place where he knows he belongs. Fighting with himself and _losing_.

 _Good thing there’s always a third way out_ , Benny had purred. _That little backup plan of yours._

“How would you have done it?” Dean asks quietly. “Did you even think about it?”

Cas shrugs. “An angel blade to the chest was the most obvious. I could just… fall on my sword, so to speak.”

Dean scoffs. “Never had a problem with that in the past.”

“Right,” Cas says with some mirth. He quirks an eyebrow. “But... you?”

Dean laughs once and swears he can hear pieces in his chest rattle. “Thought about cutting my arm clean off before.”

“That wouldn’t fix anything. The Mark would still –”

“Yeah. There’s a reason I still have an arm, Cas.”

Castiel considers this for a moment and tilts his head. “If you’re smart enough to keep your arm, I can’t imagine you’d be foolish enough to take your own life.”

Dean sighs, gearing up for the fight he’d expected from him in the first place. “Cas –”

“Dean, I understand the feeling. Truly, I do. But I can’t _ever_ support that decision. You’ve asked me to do something for you that I just _can’t_ , and if you pursue it for yourself I _will_ stop you.”

“I don’t want to die,” Dean blurts.

It’s tense and quiet in the car as Cas waits for him to keep going. “I don’t want to die,” Dean repeats firmly. “But it’s like your… Heaven thing. There’s only so much shit I can watch happen before I can’t watch anymore.”

Dean turns his eyes down to his lap then, but then there are fingers trailing across the tops of his knuckles (he hadn’t even realized he’d been clenching his fists). He relaxes a little.

“I know,” Cas tells him softly, “it’s not an easy thing to face. Our actions can have terrible consequences. Life is… messy. But yours is worth living,” he promises. “Even powerless and at my lowest, when Ephraim came for me –”

“I remember.”

Cas licks his lips. “I don’t want to die either, Dean. I didn’t then and I don’t now, not anymore." 

He hesitates.

“I had you looking out for me that night. Maybe... maybe we can keep each other going.”

Dean huffs a laugh without meeting Cas’s eyes. “Like a support group?” he jokes. “Winchester Suicide Watch?”

“Yes,” Cas says seriously. He takes his hand away from Dean’s. “I still remember what you said,” he adds.

Dean reaches for the keys and frowns. “What’s that?”

“‘I’d rather have you. Cursed or not.’”

Dean’s heart hammers hard once, twice, three times before it seems to stop all together. “The same applies for me, in case I wasn’t being clear,” Cas tells him.

Dean tries to swallow past the lump in his throat. He's only somewhat successful; his voice comes out cracked and strained as he says, “Yeah, um. I got it. Uh. Thanks.”

He turns the keys in the ignition. Apart from Cas’s concluding remarks this whole conversation has been too dark and perverse and Dean wants it to be over. Wishes words like these didn’t come with the territory. “I just don’t know how you stand it some days, man.”

Cas shrugs, and turns to face the road again. But Dean can still feel those eyes on him as he says, “You’ve got to find something to live for.”

Dean puts the car in drive and wipes a hand down his bloody face.

Maybe Cain had it right all along. Maybe that _something_ should be a some _one._

Maybe... maybe they can do this.

 

V.

Despite all of that carefully crafted control, despite all the insistence that everything is fine and with unwavering support, Dean feels himself slipping. There is so much rage in him. When Charlie is brutally murdered in that bathroom, he doesn’t care about containing it anymore.

He gives in to every dangerous impulse of the Mark. He drives down to Louisiana and fucks shit up in the most epic way before turning around and heading right back home like nothing out of the ordinary even happened. Sam has called nine times in the last twelve hours, and Dean is tempted to just chuck his cell out the window.

He hasn’t talked to Cas in days. Maybe it’s been weeks. He can’t remember.

He comes back to the bunker only to find more of those cretins lurking in the library, dumping his stuff in the middle of the room. He’s angry but it doesn’t show. That’s the guy that killed Charlie standing there, mocking him. A patchwork man without a heart, he’s barely even human. Dean doesn’t hesitate putting a bullet through his head.

Even after everything, there’s little satisfaction in it.

The last Styne kid begs for mercy and Dean doesn’t deliver. It’s freeing, choosing not to listen to his conscience. There’s no guilt. No pain. Nothing but selfish peace. Balance. Why does he keep fighting when it feels so good to indulge?

Dean is just leaving when Castiel shows up. Because of course he does, of fucking _course_ , he should have never hoped for a clean get away. 

Cas reaches out for him, tries to catch his eyes like in his bedroom, the kitchen, the library, the car. Tries to connect. But they aren’t on the same wavelength anymore; Dean has let himself become something that Cas would never dare to be, even though he knows that they have the very same capacity for destruction.

“You can leave now, Cas.”

“No. I can’t. Because I’m your friend.”

Dean draws his face carefully blank. He can’t keep dragging this out, not when he knows how badly it’s going to end once he gives in completely. But Cas still doesn’t let go.

“Maybe you could fight the Mark for years. Maybe centuries, like Cain did. But you cannot fight it forever. And when you finally turn – and you will turn –” Dean scoffs a little. “Sam, and everyone you know, everyone you love, they could be long dead.” Dean is just about to open his mouth, but Cas isn’t done. “Everyone except me.”

And that… that gives Dean pause.

“I’m the one who will have to watch you murder the world.”

Cas has never said anything like that before. He’s never implied that even if Dean chooses to become this, this indiscriminate self-serving killer, he would be by his side. That he would stay until forever came and went.

“So if there’s even a small chance that we can save you, I won’t let you walk out of this room,” Cas finishes.

Castiel's words from days ago echo in the space between their breaths. _You’ve got to find something to live for._

They’ve always understood each other better than Dean was comfortable with. ‘A more profound bond,’ Cas had called it. (How could he have possibly known back then, before anything important even happened?) An impossible bond that runs both ways, that transcends unspoken fear and is built on years of camaraderie and empathy. Dean is stuck like a skipping record on the realization that they both feel the same pull home. To come back to each other even until the end of time, until Dean razes the world to the ground and there is nothing left to come back to. They’re so perfect for each other that it hurts.

He snaps his fist forward and puts everything he has into it.

“Dean, please.”

“Dean, stop.”

“Dean.”

Castiel doesn’t fight back beyond those words.

It’s quick and efficient – before he knows it Dean’s clutching the angel blade and pressing down on Cas’s side with one knee. He has to be doing this on purpose: Dean _knows_ they can heal faster, Cas doesn’t have to leave his injuries out for him to see. Cas grips his sleeve, whispers his name again, and now they’ve come full circle.

It’s the crypt.

This is Cas’s nightmare in reverse. Castiel looks up at him without judgment, without fear, because he’s _been here before._ He has been standing over Dean with this same sword in his hand being compelled by something he was struggling to fight, done things he didn’t want to do but had to all the same. Until Dean begged him to stop. He doesn’t fight him because he understands.

He’s the only one who ever does.

This, a bloody Cas pleading under the tip of a knife, this is _Dean’s_ nightmare. (Just another thing they share.) He can see it so vividly in his mind, the way Castiel’s eyes would flare and flicker with divine light, the way his mouth would go slack and his wings turn to ash on the floor. He could never hurt Cas, not when his eyes are so kind like that. Not when Dean can tell they both know _exactly_ what he’s thinking and he still doesn’t resist.

He squirms under that gaze.

The blade gets buried in the cover of a book instead of Castiel’s chest cavity. Dean stands up, panting and shaking because the Mark isn’t satisfied.

Cas may understand what it feels like to be where Dean is, but the bottom line is that Dean doesn’t have Castel’s strength. He was wrong; they’re too different. He had thought this illusion of sameness between them would make him stronger, bring him peace, but he’s proven himself a disappointment yet again. He doesn’t deserve whatever bond Castiel thinks they have.

He growls out a warning and turns away. He leaves Castiel, alone, in a bloody pile on the floor. He doesn’t even bother to heal himself.

How did things get so twisted? How could they have ended up here  _again_ when they were so, so close?

Cas lets him go this time.

He isn’t sure that anything he could say would make this better.

**Author's Note:**

> title from 2 Corinthians 3:18 - "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another."  
> Visit me on tumblr [here](http://www.ozonecologne.tumblr.com) for more nonsense


End file.
